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ina wrote:Flo - this is a misunderstanding that many customers don't get.

Oh Ina I know - that's why I put in the rolling on the floor laughing smilie. Believe me, having run a business of a different sort I know just what customers are like. The better off they are, the harder they bargain and the smaller the business the harder they try it on.

That's probably why they are well off - they've ripped off a few small businesses on their way!

And you won't believe the number of people who don't pay their bills, and seem to think it hardly worth mentioning... I keep wanting to tell them - not paying for goods and services you've had, is theft. Theft is a crime. Therefore - you are a criminal... I never have the guts to do it, though.

At least we were gardeners and if they didn't pay we planted the weeds again on the grounds that it would have been theft to take them away. We had a reputation both as good gardeners and a firm not to be fiddled with.

Flo wrote:At least we were gardeners and if they didn't pay we planted the weeds again on the grounds that it would have been theft to take them away. We had a reputation both as good gardeners and a firm not to be fiddled with.

berry wrote:having the same problem here with charity shops although my local sells blurays for £3 and Ive found it quite lucrative to buy them all and then trade them in at those high street stores to pay for my media/gaming fix (I use an app that you can scan the barcode on the disc to see how much its worth for trade in)

Says a lot about what people in your area buy then - but if you can make money from them elsewhere that can only be good.

berry wrote:anyway... Clothes are terrible. mostly well worn and unusable although I did buy a genuine ladies kilt for a fiver. 4 metres of pure wool tartan thats slowly becoming a whole host of new items. Thats been my only bargain. everything else is primarni rubbish that barely lasts a season so Im having to buy brand new (on sale mind because of budget) but I am being silly careful to buy quality items and fewer of them. not quite how I intended to do this but theres little other choice these days.

It just shows what people are buying new that you have well worn Primark and such. People no longer seem to be looking for stuff that wears well and can be passed down when no longer required.

berry wrote:For me I used charity shops used to be a way to save money, a buffer for those with little to spend and they barely do that. all Im finding is bad better ware microwave tat from the 90s and really bad xmas gits! Freecycle is just as youve said. The back end of a car boot where folk try to offload cr*p! ebay is overpriced. gumtree not so bad although again folk want something for nothing.

It's more a reflection on the attitudes of a lot of people - buy cheap and throw it out soon. I can understand Primark/supermarkets for smalls who are growing fast or at the toddler stage where everything wears out faster than you can get it washed. But I think that adults could value things much more and buy well to wear for a longer period. Wonder when the throwaway society will die out.

Mind you there are some ridiculous prices for some clothes and I'm not sure I'd want to pay that much for them even if I was still working.

Puts hand up and has traded in (freecycle) the unused but second hand dining table with the sticky out legs that trip up people for an upcycled welsh dresser which matches the coffee table. Yep I did have to pay but I was buying local to support a small business.

The dresser has collected all sorts of oddments the family has given me over the years (wooden Swiss cow with bell, jigsaw shaped vase that is hand crafted and wobbly, wooden Russian doll from St Petersburgh that opens out to 12, a furby, a handmade pottery teapot that leaks, a pottery fish and more) so that I now have a bookcase for books, cupboard space and spare window sills.

Not sure that the upcycled item quite comes under the original list at the start but I know that it was certainly a house clearance before the small business cleaned it up and repainted it. So yes I suppose it might at a stretch come under the not buying anything new list.

Talking of freecycle, I have the most enormous money plant that someone in the village was giving away because they wanted house space. Had to buy the tub and saucer to re-pot it as I didn't own a spare one big enough due to them all being planted up with produce on the allotment. It was so tightly pot bound that the son-in-law had to use a saw to get the old one off.

How big is it? Difficult to judge from the photo... I've just put all mine (money- and other house plants) outside to make space for seedlings on the windowsills. Hope they won't get greenfly infested again - I just can't get rid of that pest indoors...

Anyway - had to buy a few new things: one trowel (I always used to have two - could only find one last year, and not even that this year! - and a ground anchor for the washing line that I had to move to make space for the shed... Doubt whether you could get that second hand, anyway. I don't think it would be a good idea to try and dig out the old one, either. Probably concreted in.

I went to help at a jumble sale today and only came back with three things (a gardening book, some body butter/cream and a large amount of unused plant protection green netting).

Having been sent off to the bric-a-brac section I didn't see how bad some of the other stuff was but I think that there was a fair amount of good quality stuff if you looked. We made £587 with door admission as we were charging second hand prices rather than charity shop prices. Left over clothes and fabrics were taken to one of the shops that pays so much cash per kilo for good stuff. Could be that there will be a little more to come then.

But it's not like the old days when I could have clothed the growing children from the jumble sale (and often did for playing out).

There was very little genuine rubbish that had to be thrown out as not fit for sale. But I still think that people send stuff to a jumble sale as it's easier that sorting it out for themselves.

Swapsies are good. Some excess seeds (bought but kids don't like, enough planted so seeds spare, that sort of thing) and seedlings swapped for some good seed trays. Mind I think that the community allotment will be getting some more seedlings if all the old packets I have planted come good. The community allotment is a site converted for disabled folks and always needs funds to keep itself going as the facilities take some keeping up. I'm having a seed draw clearing out. My plot is bulging but I usually do extras for others - seems to be a good thing as we all have various failures at seedling stage. I've been given leeks this year as I had a failure.